Phonetic Detail in Intonation Contour Dynamics

National audienceThe Autosegmental-Metrical theory of intonation investigates the relationship between f0 contours and post-lexical meaning. Phonetic data are represented in the phonology as a sequence of discrete, local events. The properties of the transitions between one event and the next are considered to be phonologically irrelevant (§1). We present data on Neapolitan Italian which show a significant correlation between the shape of these transitions and the pragmatic context in which a sentence is uttered. This correlation is stronger than the one displayed by traditional autosegmental-metrical indices (§2 and §3). In the conclusions, we discuss the usefulness of our findings as a step towards the finetuning of the autosegmental-metrical theory (§4)

Synthèse des variations de la fréquence fondamentale de la parole arabe à partir du texte

- Cette communication s'articule autour de la génération automatique des variations de la fréquence fondamentale (FO) pour la langue arabe standard. Cette étude pour la modélisation de l'intonation de l'arabe est menée dans le contexte de la synthèse par règle. Le modèle proposé est fondé sur l'hypothèse qui stipule que l'information linguistique est contenue dans les points cibles du contour intonatif. La perception de l'accent lexical en arabe est corrélée avec les variations de F0. Les règles employées pour déterminer les points cibles sont fondées sur l'algorithme d'accentuation. La validation de ce modèle est effectuée par l'utilisation de deux systèmes de synthèse. Une évaluation perceptive des résultats est proposée. Le traitement proposé de l'intonation permet une amélioration considérable du naturel de la parole de synthèse

Surface Structure, Intonation, and Meaning in Spoken Language

The paper briefly reviews a theory of intonational prosody and its relation syntax, and to certain oppositions of discourse meaning that have variously been called topic and comment , theme and rheme , given and new , or presupposition and focus . The theory, which is based on Combinatory Categorial Grammar, is presented in full elsewhere. the present paper examines its consequences for the automatic synthesis and analysis of speech

A Prosodic Turkish text-to-speech synthesizer

Naturalness in Text-to-Speech systems is very important in achieving high quality waveform. The naturalness of the waveform is highly correlated with phonetic coverage and prosodic features such as, duration and F0 contour. Duration determines the timing for the synthesized phoneme, whereas F0 contour determines fundamental frequency component of the waveform. This thesis presents the development of a prosodic Text-to-Speech System for Turkish Language using the Festival Tool [31]. We describe a complete realization of a new male voice, covering allophones of Turkish using duration and F0 parameters. The duration of the allophones and the word stress have been studied extensively. Sentence stress and phrasal stress are also discussed by in less detail. Carrier words are designed approximately for all allophone-allophone combinations. 1680 carrier words are recorded in a sound-proof recording studio. LPC (linear predictive coding) and RES (residual) parameters are computed. The text normalisation module is implemented for abbreviations and numbers. Durations for the allophones are entered. Sentence level and word level F0 generation modules are implemented. By increasing the number of phonemes and giving prosody we obtained a more natural sounding Text-to-Speech System for Turkish Language

Phonetic Evidence for a Feed-�forward Model: Rounding and Center of Gravity of English [ʃ]

This thesis uses empirical data to make the case that the architecture of Grammar is feed-�forward. There are three thematic parts: first, I discuss the separation of different phonetically important variables into modules and how a few prominent planning and production models have regarded the order of those modules. Then, I give a novel, statistical operationalization of the concept of feed-�forwardness. Finally, I present the results of a production experiment — targeting the center of gravity (COG) of American English [ʃ] — wherein multiple phonetically important variables are simultaneously manipulated. The aforementioned models are translated into linear mixed effects models and then compared based on their ability to predict the experimental data; I find that the model which corresponds to Keating & Shattuck�-Hufnagel’s 1989 model and Chomsky’s 1965 T�-model most parsimoniously fits the data, thereby providing phonetic evidence for a feed-�forward model of the Grammar. Discussion of some implications for phonetic and phonological research ensues

Toward invariant functional representations of variable surface fundamental frequency contours: Synthesizing speech melody via model-based stochastic learning

Variability has been one of the major challenges for both theoretical understanding and computer synthesis of speech prosody. In this paper we show that economical representation of variability is the key to effective modeling of prosody. Specifically, we report the development of PENTAtrainer—A trainable yet deterministic prosody synthesizer based on an articulatory–functional view of speech. We show with testing results on Thai, Mandarin and English that it is possible to achieve high-accuracy predictive synthesis of fundamental frequency contours with very small sets of parameters obtained through stochastic learning from real speech data. The first key component of this system is syllable-synchronized sequential target approximation—implemented as the qTA model, which is designed to simulate, for each tonal unit, a wide range of contextual variability with a single invariant target. The second key component is the automatic learning of function-specific targets through stochastic global optimization, guided by a layered pseudo-hierarchical functional annotation scheme, which requires the manual labeling of only the temporal domains of the functional units. The results in terms of synthesis accuracy demonstrate that effective modeling of the contextual variability is the key also to effective modeling of function-related variability. Additionally, we show that, being both theory-based and trainable (hence data-driven), computational systems like PENTAtrainer can serve as an effective modeling tool in basic research, with which the level of falsifiability in theory testing can be raised, and also a closer link between basic and applied research in speech science can be developed

Prosodic detail in Neapolitan Italian

Recent findings on phonetic detail have been taken as supporting exemplar-based approaches to prosody. Through four experiments on both production and perception of both melodic and temporal detail in Neapolitan Italian, we show that prosodic detail is not incompatible with abstractionist approaches either. Specifically, we suggest that the exploration of prosodic detail leads to a refined understanding of the relationships between the richly specified and continuous varying phonetic information on one side, and coarse phonologically structured contrasts on the other, thus offering insights on how pragmatic information is conveyed by prosody

Prosodic detail in Neapolitan Italian

Recent findings on phonetic detail have been taken as supporting exemplar-based approaches to prosody. Through four experiments on both production and perception of both melodic and temporal detail in Neapolitan Italian, we show that prosodic detail is not incompatible with abstractionist approaches either. Specifically, we suggest that the exploration of prosodic detail leads to a refined understanding of the relationships between the richly specified and continuous varying phonetic information on one side, and coarse phonologically structured contrasts on the other, thus offering insights on how pragmatic information is conveyed by prosody